Team:UIOWA/Public Engagement

Education and Public Engagement

The Voyages of Plasmo, Molecular Defender

Voyages of Plasmo.1
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It can be difficult to get kids and teens excited for science. Whether it be chemistry, biology, physics or any other class on the physical world, kids just don’t look forward to learning about those topics. Our team sought out to change this perspective. What better way than through an action-packed comic?

Everything in biology relates to one idea; the Central Dogma, as it is often called. Put simply, this is the idea that DNA turns into RNA, and RNA turns into Proteins. This idea is drilled into school-aged individuals from middle school up until college. So we aimed to center our comic around this idea in hope of making it a little less complex, and a lot more exciting.

Two members of our team tackled this project: Kyleakin Helm wrote the script for the comic. She created the story and brought the characters to life. Katherine Amick created the character concepts and began drawing the comic itself. Unfortunately, due to time constraints, the comic was not finished. Because the script is complete, the team hopes to get the comic moving again for next year.

Summary: Plasmo is an up and coming scientist. He wants to be apart of the Synthetic Biology world, but he must first understand the basics to work up to that. He gets shipped to a faraway world to learn about Replication, Transcription, and Translation. He is guided around the world to view all the different components that go into the Central Dogma Process. Along the way he meets a variety of characters (such as Modus: Creator of Phosphodiester Bonds, Clyde: The Director of the Cell and Primasero: The Great Base Pair Salesman), encounters epic battles between the DNA and the RNA world, and learns to fully appreciate how much time and effort is put into the Central Dogma Process.

Iowa State Fair Booth

Iowa State Fair is an annual event with an extensive history in the state of Iowa, dating back to the year 1854 in which the inaugural fair began. Situated in the Des Moines Fairgrounds, the Iowa State Fair is currently is one of the largest summer attractions in the state of Iowa, attracting over one million visitors from Auguest 9th through the 20th in the year 2018.

The team's involvement as part of The University of Iowa STEM booth aims to provide outreach, educating the public about the importance of synthetic biology on the afternoon of August 18th. Members presented through visual and interactives activities, posters, and pamphlet pertaining to the work with 3-HP. The poster and pamphlet included a brief description about the background of the iGEM team, relevance of synthetic biology, ongoing investigation with 3-HP, and resources to gain further understanding. The activities focused on building bracelets (proteins) from beads of various coloration (amino acids) and many children/parents were able to work collaboratively in building complex proteins.

Midwest iGEM Meetup in Michigan

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Soliciting UIOWA/MSU Sponsored Couch
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Promoting Good Health: Stay Hydrated, Stay Fit
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Don't Eat These Plants!
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We Love Plants!
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Beautiful View of MSU's Campus
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Learning About Other Teams' Projects
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Surviving on Photosynthesis: LIKE A MOSS
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*cue music* We're All In This Together

The Michigan State University iGEM Midwest meetup was a great opportunity for iGEMers around the midwest to get to know each other and discuss the projects. The trip consisted with several activities organized by the host, including a tour of the poisonous plant farms and laboratory that cultivated moss for photosynthesis. The University of Iowa iGEM team presented the project on inducible 3-HP promoter as biosenosr for the use of industrial production of bioplastics. The teams were given feedbacks by experts attending the meetups and other teams to be brought back for mentor discussion. Overall, everyone who atteneded had a pleasant experience and were really grateful for this opportunity to meet other iGEMers.

Iowa State Fair Booth

Iowa State Fair is an annual event with an extensive history in the state of Iowa, dating back to the year 1854 in which the inaugural fair began. Situated in the Des Moines Fairgrounds, the Iowa State Fair is currently is one of the largest summer attractions in the state of Iowa, attracting over one million visitors from Auguest 9th through the 20th in the year 2018.

The team's involvement as part of The University of Iowa STEM booth aims to provide outreach, educating the public about the importance of synthetic biology on the afternoon of August 18th. Members presented through visual and interactives activities, posters, and pamphlet pertaining to the work with 3-HP. The poster and pamphlet included a brief description about the background of the iGEM team, relevance of synthetic biology, ongoing investigation with 3-HP, and resources to gain further understanding. The activities focused on building bracelets (proteins) from beads of various coloration (amino acids) and many children/parents were able to work collaboratively in building complex proteins.

Interview About How to Create a Comic with Anya Kim

Our Team Member, Kyleakin, got to sit down with a fellow comic book creator, Anya Kim, to learn about the process of creating and presenting a science comic. Anya received her Bachelor’s Degree in Neuroscience and Spanish at the University of Iowa. She was involved in a program called the Latham Science Initiative. The goal of Latham was to teach students how to communicate their research as well as scientific concepts. Anya created her comic, “Brains! A Close-Up of What is Going on Inside Your Head” for this program and it has gained fame all around the University and beyond. Anya is currently studying abroad in Barcelona, focusing on Microglial and Huntington’s Disease. She will be attending Johns Hopkins University in their joint MD/PhD program.

Because we wanted our comic book to reach younger audiences who might not know much about science or be interested, we asked Anya who she made her comic for. She made “Brains!” for elementary school aged children. She intentionally left the comic book black and white so that it could be colored by the children. She said this was a huge success when she had the opportunity to hand it out to kids.

Kyleakin also asked what hardships Anya encountered along the way and what the most challenging part of creating a comic was. Anya said printing was extremely expensive and that’s what was limiting for her project. For us, we considered doing a digital copy of our comic. I asked her if she would ever be interested in doing something of that sort with “Brains!”. She said she might someday be interested in doing that. Time management was also a big constraint for her. She said she was able to draw out the entire comic (the story being previously written) within two weeks. She does not recommend that to anyone, though, as it was a lot of work.

We played with the idea of leaving our comic in black and white (which is how it is currently presented). We liked the idea of people being able to color in the characters and the scenes. We also knew that playing with Photoshop in order to color the comics would be a feat within itself. Perhaps next year we’ll have a vibrant, colorful comic to present digitally!

Midwest iGEM Meetup in Michigan

Several of our team members, Jianwei Hu, Delaney Soule, Katie Amick and Kyleakin Helm attended the iGEM Midwest Meetup at Michigan State University in East Lansing, MI. Michigan State invited us to come and share an informal presentation about our project and our goals. The hope was to get some experience presenting in front of others, as well as meet other teams and discuss possible collaborations.

Michigan State hosted a great Meetup. It all started off with a tour of the University’s huge garden. The garden consists of plants of every kind you can imagine. Even the most dangerous ones. Although it was a brutally hot day, it was a very interesting tour. We got to learn about the differences between edible plants and poisonous plants, even got to hear some interesting stories about why the poisonous plants had to have a small fence around them (animals kept getting into them and were getting sick). We even were given a seeds for our very own plant to take home. No one from our team got the same plant either!

After the plant tour, we were given lunch catered by a local Thai restaurant. It was quite delicious and gave (some of us) something new to try. After lunch we moved into some fun icebreaker games. We split up into several groups with mixtures of people from different iGEM teams. One of our activities included a competition to see how fast and well we could wrap someone up like a mummy given a time limit.

We moved forward into giving presentations about our various projects. We received feedback from other teams, as well as professors and mentors. Our own Midwest iGEM representative, John Girgis, made an appearance and gave us some helpful insight on what could make our projects better.

We were then treated to a Michigan State tradition; samples of their ice cream. Michigan State has their own ice cream store where the students make and sell a variety of flavors. Everything from peanut butter flavored to blueberry. After filling our stomachs, we got to go on a tour of the labs that the MSU iGEM team works in. We even got to see all of their plant and moss collections.

The day finished with a big board-game party. The iGEM team set up a variety of board games and all of the teams got to experience a little friendly competition in a new form. But we didn’t want to end the trip there. We had such a great time with the MSU team that we decided to hang out for a little while longer. We made some great friends, ate some good food and bonded over everyone’s favorite topic: science.

Team

TRIO Escape Room for High School Students

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University of Iowa’s iGEM team collaborated with Trio Upward Bound Projects to create a hands-on escape room revolved around synthetic biology. The escape room took place at North Liberty Highschool in North Liberty Iowa. A group of 52 students ranging from the ages 14-17 attended the after-school workshop. To begin, a lecture was given to provide students with the information they would need to be able to complete the escape room. The basic idea of synthetic biology was explained along with topics such as protein synthesis, bioethics, biobricks, careers in synthetic biology, and mutations. The main goal of this workshop was to introduce high school students to the field of synthetic biology and persuade them to pursue the field in the future.

One of the main topics of the escape room was bioethics. The concept of the escape room was revolved around a lab that was working on genetically modifying mosquitos to eradicate malaria. The students were told that these mosquitos escaped and risked being released into the environment where they could cause potential harm. Students had to utilize concepts like translation and transcription to decipher clues and left around the room.

To begin, a sequence of template DNA was provided. The students had to transcribe this template DNA into mRNA to find a code to unlock a briefcase left in the room. Inside the briefcase, a second clue led the students to translate the mRNA strand into its corresponding amino acid strands to break into a computer. Various other tasks including finding parts of a biobrick and placing them in the correct order and determining where mutations occurred in an altered DNA sequence ultimately led the students to hack into an email, find where the mosquitos were, and contain them before they could reach the outside environment.

The students seemed to really enjoy themselves. The escape room was successful in promoting synthetic biology in a fun and new way. The students were challenged academically, but ultimately managed to complete the activity. In the future, the University of Iowa’s iGEM team hopes to collaborate with Trio again to create more hands on activities that encourage younger generations to potentially pursue a career in synthetic biology.

TRIO_KATIE TRIO_Jenny

TAs for the Honors Primetime Synthetic Biology Course at University of Iowa

Some students in our iGEM team worked with freshman from the class of 2022 on real life lab skills in synthetic biology. We began by teaching the students about proper sterile technique and the importance of properly documenting their work. We had the students perform the 2017 Interlab. While the students' didn't obtain perfect results, it gave us an opportunity to teach them about troubleshooting in biology experiments.

Interviewed for 23andMe’s Educational Blog

Mason LaMarche is a University of Iowa graduate. He is a first year medical student at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine. He is the founding member of the Personal Genome Learning Center and the DNA monthly Interest Group of Iowa City. He was part of last year Iowa IGEM team. He asked us if he could have an interview with us for the 23andMe’s newest education blog. During the interview, we did an overview of our project. In addition, we discussed how valuable our experiences with IGEM are for our future career as a scientist. Furthemore, as part of the Iowa IGEM group, we have learned multiple problem solving skills.